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Swimmers, triathletes and their coaches love a good acronym when it comes to remembering something that has well-meaning intentions to help you improve your swimming.

Take S.W.O.L.F for example - this is actually half-acronym and half-portmanteau (a fusion of two words), ‘swimming’ and ‘golf’. It's been used for eons by both coaches - and now smart devices – to purportedly give you a measure of your efficiency in the water by combining the number of strokes you do per length and the time it takes you in seconds to complete each length, i.e. 56 strokes and 56 seconds = 112.

To get a ‘better’ (lower) score one should either take fewer strokes and/or complete the length in a shorter time.

Like improved prowess in golf, S.W.O.L.F purports that to be more ‘efficient’ when swimming you have to try to reduce your total number. However, this is very much not the case, and just like the acronym B.L.A.B.T, we’ll demonstrate today how both of these age-old swimming acronyms might actually be holding you back, and then give you a short sequence you can practice this week to work on what *should* be the first letter of the stroke correction hierarchy acronym - B, for BREATHING!

Don't forget our brilliant Swim Smooth Coaches can help you with all of this, including the video analysis required to identify what issues are holding you back: https://www.swimsmooth.guru/coaches

The topic of swimming straighter is not exactly SEXY, but it will help you swim a LOT faster, especially in the open water!

This week’s 3rd stage in our Swim Smooth Stroke Correction Hierarchy will focus on “A for Alignment”, which covers off a large magnitude of aspects of the freestyle stroke, including:

1. The distance you reach forwards in front of your head

2. Hand alignment as you enter into the water

3. Hand depth as you extend forwards in the water

4. Lateral positioning of your hand and arm as you extend forwards in the water

…and most importantly, the effect that any issues with these aspects of your alignment have on the other areas of your stroke, vis-à-vis, welcome to the Cause & Effect aspect of our Methodology ✅

Alignment can really be thought of as anything that will help set you up for a better stroke, specifically the catch (as we’ll discuss next week).

These four aspects of your alignment can all be brought together with a drill I designed specifically for this in 2013 which I named the “Javelin drill”. The drill progression starts with simply kicking on your side, which is a great way of testing your stability and alignment in it’s raw form. If you can improve on this simple aspect, your swimming will improve in leaps and bounds no matter what your ability level or core issue facing your stroke.

Buy the FINIS alignment kickboard here: https://shop.swimsmooth.com/collections/finis-sale/products/finis-alignment-kickboard

Part 1 of the series (BREATHING): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ANlVogg_Y&t=8s

Part 2 of the series (DRAG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNxDjfyZZbw&t=893s

Join us in Montenegro for our 3-day Coach Education Course 3-5 October 2023: https://forms.gle/xPidqqDw82cWbtJt8

So on last week’s video we discussed whether two common swimming acronyms – SWOLF (or swimming-golf) and BLABT (stroke correction hierarchy) are beneficial (or harmful) for your swimming, at least when taken too literally and even out of context. Today we’re going to look at the second step in our Stroke Correction Hierarchy to help you make some further gains.

What’s next on the Stroke Correction Hierarchy? That’ll be drag, or rather, how to reduce it!

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet for reducing drag in the freestyle stroke. Common causes include:

1. holding onto your breath which increases buoyancy in the chest cavity and sinks the legs

2. lifting the head too high to breathe which sinks the legs

3. looking too far forwards in the water which sinks the legs

4. crossing over in front of the head which causes the legs to scissor kick apart and sink

5. poor core control allowing the legs to sink and the hips to snake from side to side

tight muscles in the upper back, hips and ankles which cause the legs to sink

A swimmer needs to think of the above link a little checklist - ticking off each one as you analyse your stroke for factors that might be adding to your drag.

Ultimately, you only need to solve one equation to swim well:

Efficiency = reduce DRAG + increase effective PROPULSION

So how exactly did Charles, a half-Iron triathlete knock off 10 minutes over 1500m between session 1 and session 2 of his stroke correction with me? Well, he believed it was all down to my input suggesting he look more down to the bottom of the pool, but if we actually check out his before and after video from a few angles, you’ll see there was a bit more to it than that.

Finally, let’s check out this analysis with Mahesh from just yesterday – it’s a great link between the first two steps in our Stroke Correction Hierarchy – Breathing and Drag – and I hope the tips here today allow you to work through some of your own drag issues this week whilst you wait for step three in the hierarchy.

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Have you ever been taught that you need to take fewer strokes per lap to be more efficient? How is it then that there is such a massive range in swimming styles at the pointy-end of the sport with some swimmers taking only 27 or 28 strokes to complete each 50m and others 40+?

Why do some swimmers look smooth and a seemingly effortless swimming style with a steady stroke rate, but others looks short, punchy and with a very high stroke frequency?

In today's video - Part 5 of our Swim Smooth Stroke Correction Hierarchy - we bust some myths about what makes an efficient freestyle stroke, and more importantly, show you how to find your best rhythm and timing to develop great momentum, efficiency and economy with your swimming using our Stroke Rate Ramp Test.

00:00 Introduction

01:13 Recap of Stages 1-4

03:36 Comparison of elites - Mack Horton, Gregorio Paltrinieri, Becky Adlington, Alistair Brownlee, Anna-Karin Lundin, Shelley Taylor-Smith, Janet Evans

04:42 The falacy of stroke counting and your efficiency

06:36 The continuous stroke versus the glide stroke

08:31 How a parachute can show whether you're efficient or not

09:59 Study to show stroke rate manipulation and economy

13:14 Higher rates allow open water swimmers and triathletes deal with any open water conditions

14:54 Gregorio Paltrinieri versus Florian Wellbrock

16:20 Interview with Bud McAllister - coach to Janet Evans, Olympic gold medallist

21:26 Identifying your optimal stroke rate

22:52 Introduction to the stroke rate ramp test

27:36 Full stroke rate ramp test with Scott from New Zealand

If you missed any of the previous 4 videos in this sequence you can access the full playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuJVX_JuTJA&list=PLLmCn3sOlEw7UgiNB2Ney03oXen4c1BQY